What Marco Rubio as Secretary of State would mean for Israel – The Forward

Late. Marco Rubio (R-FL) speaks during a Trump rally on Nov. 4, 2024. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh
November 11, 2024

Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is expected to be nominated for secretary of state in another Trump administration, New York Times reported Monday evening.

Rubio, who challenged Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, joined him on the campaign trail to help broaden Trump’s appeal to Hispanic voters in the final weeks of the presidential election.

Earlier Monday, Trump announced that another Florida representative, Congressman Mike Waltz, will serve as his national security adviser.

What a Rubio nomination would mean for Israel

Rubio ran for president in 2016 as a foreign policy hawk. He criticized Trump for promising to be “neutral” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In recent years, however, he has moderated his views and aligned himself more closely with Trump’s populist agenda. IN an interview earlier this year Rubio said his foreign policy has evolved as “the world looks different than it did five, 10, 15 years ago.”

He previously surprised supporters and donors with his vote against the emergency aid to Israel in April. Rubio argued that the foreign aid package should have included border enforcement measures and objected to its connection with aid to Ukraine and Taiwan, a decision that resonated with Trump’s base.

Despite this, Rubio’s vocal support for Israel remains consistent. As vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he has visited Israel in Apriland in November 2023 co-hosted a bipartisan screening for members of Congress of the film documenting atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. Rubio compared the Israeli Defense Forces’ ground operation in Rafahopposed by the Biden administration, to the Allies’ persecution of Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust.

Rubio’s nomination requires Senate confirmation.

Rubio’s complex relationship with Jews

Born in Miami of Cuban parents who baptized him as a CatholicRubio spent three years of his youth as a Mormon. He has maintained a close relationship with the Florida Jewish community, estimated at 5% of the state’s voters.

Norman Braman, a car dealership magnate and former president of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, was Rubio’s political patron and the single largest individual behind his 2016 presidential campaign. In 2015, Democrats in Florida criticized Rubio to hold a fundraising event on Yom Kippur in the Texas home of Harlan Crow, a conservative philanthropist whose art collection includes works by Adolf Hitler, a signed copy of Mein Kampf and a “closet full of envelopes and bed linens used by the Nazi leader.”

Rubio is a long time supporter of orthodox and religious causes. But he too angry orthodox leaders in 2022 to introduce a bill that would make daylight saving time permanent across the country. (The bill would have made it more difficult to attend morning prayers and get to work on time.) The Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent, but it was stalled in the House

Rubio Trump apologized after he repeatedly accused American Jews of disloyalty to Israel and suggested they hate their religion by voting for Democrats. “Being your religion and being pro-Israel can be two separate things,” Rubio said CBS News Meet the nation in March. He accused President Joe Biden to try to appeal to “anti-Semites” in the Democratic Party by criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza.

The Florida senator said he supports Trump’s plan to deport foreign students who were engaged in fomenting the pro-Palestinian campus protests. In April he has called upon to punish supporters of the Boycott Israel movement in efforts to counter growing anti-Semitism.

Last year, after Oct. 7, when criticism mounted over TikTok’s role in amplifying anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content on its social media platform, Rubio wrote X“TikTok is a tool China uses to spread propaganda to Americans, now it’s being used to trivialize Hamas terrorism.” He took a leading role in a congressional effort to ban TikiTok by 2022.